The Bottle of Tears

by Nick Alexander

  She pauses briefly. She even sets the nail brush down. She stares out at the London rooftops, watches a bird soaring and then landing on a chimney stack. It’s going to be a lovely, sunny day. Perhaps she should go out for a walk. She could go to the park.

  When she looks back at her hands, they’re already brushing again, her left hand now working on the right. By the time she has finished, the root of one of her fingernails is bleeding a little. It’s just past eight o’clock, so she’s allowed, thank God, to take her first Valium.

  She crosses to the corner of the room and fumbles blindly on the top shelf until her fingers touch the edge of the blister pack. But to her surprise, it’s empty. The little blue tablets have gone. Which is confusing because a) she’s certain she had two left and b) she never keeps an empty pack. She stretches and leans and pats every inch of the shelf but finds no second pack lurking out of sight. She grabs a chair from beneath the dining table, drags it across to the shelf and climbs up. The shelf is dusty. She needs to clean it. It is dusty, but empty.

  She frowns and climbs down. She pulls her handbag from the hall cupboard and rifles around for the missing blister pack. She returns to the kitchen and empties the bag on to the table. She pads through to the bedroom, where she opens the drawer of her bedside table, and sighs in relief at the sight of the Valium box. But to her shock, it, too, is empty. What should be a full, fresh box containing three blister packs, each containing ten tablets, is entirely empty as well.

  Did God hear her thinking about the need to go cold turkey? It’s a silly thought, but it’s the first one that comes to mind. But if God’s too busy to stop a war in Syria, how likely is he to intervene in the case of Victoria Cunningham’s Valium? Not God, then, she thinks. Martin, perhaps? Could Martin have decided that she needs to quit? Has he emptied the entire flat of Valium?

  Feeling increasingly panicky, she checks the pockets of her various jackets in the wardrobe, the drawer on Martin’s side of the bed, beneath the bed, in the bathroom cabinet and beneath the kitchen sink, where she hides her cigarettes. And then, still fingering the cigarette packet, and by now sweating profusely, she sits at the kitchen table to phone Martin.

  He answers immediately. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘You missing me already?’

  ‘Hello,’ Victoria replies. ‘Um, I . . . Look . . . there’s no nice way to ask this, but, have you . . . Oh, I didn’t wake you, did I?’

  ‘Nope,’ Martin says. ‘It’s just gone midday, here. So what’s up?’

  ‘I can’t find my Valium. It’s all gone.’ She can hear her voice wobbling. She needs to get a grip on that.

  ‘OK . . .’ Martin says, dubiously.

  ‘I had two tablets left in one pack, and a full box in the bedside table, but they’re all gone.’

  ‘I don’t think I can buy Valium here, if that’s what you mean,’ Martin says. ‘They’re pretty strict about—’

  ‘No, that’s not why I’m calling,’ Victoria interrupts. ‘I just needed to check, you know . . . that you didn’t . . . I mean . . . it’s not you, is it? You haven’t taken them?’

  After an uncomfortable silence, during which she can almost hear Martin fidgeting in his seat, he says, ‘Are you actually telling me that you think I took your Valium?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘No. Of course not. Why would I steal your bloody Valium?’ Martin asks, sounding angry.

  ‘I didn’t think you stole it,’ Victoria says.

  ‘Well, what then?’

  ‘I thought maybe you hid it.’

  ‘Why on earth would I hide your Valium?’

  Even though Martin can’t see her, Victoria shrugs. ‘I don’t know,’ she says meekly. ‘Maybe you think I take too much.’

  ‘I think we both know that you take too much.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’

  ‘Definitely. But now’s not the right time for that conversation. I’m at work. I’m with a client, dear.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So, you got confused. And you put it somewhere else, all right?’

  ‘All right,’ Victoria breathes.

  ‘Sorry, but I’ve gotta go. Talk later.’

  ‘Yes. Yes . . . I’m sorry. Really, I am.’

  ‘It’s fine. Goodbye.’

  Victoria remains at the kitchen table. She puts down her mobile and pushes it around the glass table top with one finger as she tries to think. Martin’s outrage at being accused was totally convincing, plus, he’s a terrible liar, so that leaves only three remaining possibilities. Either she’s going mad and has forgotten moving the Valium to a new hiding place, or someone broke in and stole it in the night, or . . .

  She gasps. She clicks on her phone to check the time. It’s twenty past eight. Bertie should be up by now.

  She stands sharply, knocking her chair over, then runs to his bedroom door. It’s locked. She bangs on the door. There’s no reply.

  She raps on the door more loudly. There’s still no reply. ‘Bertie?’ she calls out, her heart starting to race. ‘Bertie? Bertie?! BERTIE?’

  She’s starting to cry, so she raises one hand to cover her mouth. She tries the door knob again and pushes harder, but it won’t budge.

  She knocks harder still, now hammering on the door, then pushes at the door with her hip. She pictures the lock on the other side – a simple sliding bolt. There’s no way to open it from the outside. They should never have let Bertie fit it, of course, but it’s too late now.

  She runs to the kitchen and picks up her phone again. She calls Bertie’s number, but he doesn’t answer, so she renews the operation from outside his bedroom door and can hear it vibrating inside the room.

  Pointlessly, she tries the door again, knocks again, calls out again. And then, with difficulty – her hands are trembling so hard – she selects Martin’s name from the list on the phone. But that’s a stupid idea. Martin’s in Dubai. He can’t help her.

  She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, and tries, desperately, to think. She could call the police, the firemen, an ambulance, and get them to kick down the door, perhaps? But they take ages. She needs something quicker than that.

  She strides to the door of the flat, and then, after a single second’s hesitation, due to the fact that she’s in her dressing gown, she opens it and runs barefoot downstairs to the flat below.

  Dawn, her Caribbean thirty-something neighbour, opens the door immediately.

  ‘Can you . . . Sorry! Hello. Um . . . Look . . . I need help . . .’ Victoria splutters. ‘Is your husband in?’

  Dawn nods nervously. ‘Justin!’ she calls out. ‘Come quick.’

  A door opens and Justin appears. He’s a massive presence, both tall and overweight. He’s wearing boxer shorts only and his ginger brush of hair is flattened from sleep. ‘Oh!’ he says, seeing Victoria in the doorway.

  ‘Victoria here needs your help,’ Dawn tells him over her shoulder, without breaking eye contact. ‘I think it’s urgent.’

  ‘Right!’ Justin says. ‘I’ll . . . um . . . Hang on. Just let me get some clothes on.’

  ‘Be quick, please,’ Victoria says. Once he has vanished from view, she continues, more loudly, ‘It’s my son. He’s locked in his room. I think . . . I think he might have done something stupid. Please be quick.’

  Victoria sits, her head in her hands. She listens to the heart monitor beeping, as regular as a metronome. She listens to – and breathes in time with – the wheezy rush of the ventilator.

  Beside her, Bertie, who has been pumped out, fed with laxatives, activated charcoal and God knows what else, sleeps peacefully. He looks blissful, completely unaware of the angst he has put everyone through.

  It had taken Justin a single kick to open the bedroom door and less than ten minutes to carry Bertie to the car and drive him to St John’s Hospital. It was faster than an ambulance, he insisted, and Victoria, who has seen with her own eyes how slow ambula
nces can be, had agreed.

  The doctors, initially frowning and urgent, quickly shifted to something that looked far more like ‘relaxed’, that even looked like ‘amused’ at times. Because Valium, it seems, is a terrible way to commit suicide. Or one of the best ways, depending on how you look at it. It would take hundreds of tablets, the doctor had told her, to do any damage at all. In fact, the only real risk was that Bertie’s breathing might be affected.

  Wheeze, goes the ventilator. Wheeze, click, whoosh.

  The terror has abated now, leaving room for a whole bunch of other emotions. Confusion – why would Bertie do such a thing? Guilt – how could she not have known how unhappy he was? Anger with Bertie – for is he not a spoilt little brat with an iPad, an iPhone, two loving parents and a lockable private bedroom in Maida Vale? Shame – for what kind of mother sees two doctors in order to get extra Valium prescriptions? For what kind of mother leaves the stuff lying around the house? The doctor’s questions made her feel like a junkie who had left her smack lying around. And is that not exactly what she is?

  There’s a sense of fear, too – fear of what Bertie will say when he comes around. Because perhaps there’s something going on that she doesn’t know about. Something at school, perhaps. Or even something at home. It happens in families. She’s seen that with her own eyes, too. So she won’t phone Martin just yet. She’ll wait until her son has explained the inexplicable. She’ll wait until she knows just what she’s dealing with.

  It’s 7 p.m., and Victoria is in a taxi, travelling home.

  Bertie is still out for the count, still snoring and grinning in his sleep in a way which makes her want to slap him hard. There will be no meetings with psychiatrists until tomorrow, there will be no revelations, no explanations, no cracks shooting across the thin ice of her life until then. No, everything’s on hold until tomorrow. So she just has to somehow get through the next fourteen hours.

  There will be no more Valium until tomorrow either.

  To her shame, she had asked Bertie’s doctor for a prescription – in a roundabout way, of course. ‘I was just wondering,’ she had told him, as convincing as an actor in one of those Latin American sitcoms, ‘as he stole all my Valium . . . I was just wondering, well, is it safe, for me to stop? So suddenly, I mean?’

  Dr Bednarski had frowned at her. ‘After this . . .’ he had said, gesturing at Bertie in the bed, ‘you want me to give you more Valium?’

  ‘No,’ Victoria had replied, faking indignation. ‘I just wanted to check I’m not going to die or something if I suddenly stop!’

  ‘Pfff,’ the doctor had said. It sounded like a special Polish noise.

  But then, as he studied Bertie’s chart, and as Victoria blushed and sweated even more profusely than previously, his facial expression had softened. ‘How much have you been taking?’ he had asked, without looking her in the eye.

  ‘Um, ten milligrams. Four times a day. It’s a lot. I know. I’ve been talking to my GP about reduc—’

  ‘For how long have you have take this dosage?’

  ‘A year, maybe. Perhaps two.’

  ‘Pfff . . .’ Dr Bednarski had said again. But then he’d added, ‘I get a nurse to bring you some. Just until tomorrow. But you must see your doctor to taper this.’ He had wiggled his finger at her. ‘This is too much, OK?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Victoria had said, then, ‘And I know. I’m . . . you know . . . I’m on it.’

  ‘Yes,’ the doctor replied. ‘Yes, I know you’re on it.’

  But now, she has taken both tablets. So no, there will be no more Valium today.

  As the taxi pulls up outside the house, she imagines facing Justin, facing Dawn. She wonders if they’ve told anyone else in the building.

  ‘He’s fine,’ she’ll tell them. ‘He’s sleeping. I’m so sorry to have troubled you.’

  And then she’ll let herself into the empty flat and she’ll try not to think about what went wrong in this family – her family. She’ll try to get through this night, try to get through it without Martin, without Bertie, without Penny, without Valium.

  It’s no worse than she deserves, after all.

  ‘Come in, come in!’ Dr Cheeder says, beckoning through the open door.

  Victoria is surprised. She has no idea why she assumed the psychiatrist would be a man, but she had totally assumed that. Perhaps it’s simply because both her GP and her Harley Street doctor (who she saw just an hour ago), as well as Bertie’s doctor on the ward, are all men. Or perhaps she’s just a bit more sexist than she realises. Wasn’t there a riddle Bertie used to tell about a car accident and a surgeon, a riddle which tripped everyone up, precisely because everyone automatically imagined that the surgeon was a man?

  She enters Dr Cheeder’s office, leaving the man with the nervous twitch and the girl with the bandaged wrist in the waiting area.

  Dr Cheeder – Dr Trudy Cheeder, according to her name tag – leans over the desk and shakes Victoria’s hand warmly. A shadow crosses her expression. ‘OCD?’ she asks, nodding at Victoria’s still-outstretched hand.

  Victoria frowns, so Dr Cheeder expounds, ‘Your hands. That’s compulsive hand washing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, um, no . . .’ Victoria says, looking down at her shiny pink hand, then, ‘Actually, yes. I suppose it probably is something like that.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Dr Cheeder says. ‘It’s an occupational hazard, spotting stuff like that . . . Please, sit down.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Victoria says, sitting and then struggling to know where to place her incriminating hands.

  ‘Just before we move on to your son, are you seeing anyone for that?’

  ‘For my hands?’

  ‘Yes. We have a specialist here, Graham Masters. They get very good results with CBT – that’s cognitive behavioural therapy. It works wonders.’

  ‘Really,’ Victoria says, starting to blush.

  ‘You can get your GP to refer you, and I’m sure Graham can help you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Victoria says. ‘I’ll, um, think about it.’

  ‘So, on to Albert,’ the doctor says, glancing down at her notepad. ‘Because that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Bertie, yes. He prefers Bertie. We all call him Bertie.’

  ‘Of course. So Bertie nicked all your Valium, eh?’

  Victoria nods. ‘I should have locked it away. I feel terrible.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that too much,’ Dr Cheeder says. ‘If someone wants to attempt suicide, then there’s always a way. And most of them are far more likely to succeed than taking Valium.’

  ‘Yes,’ Victoria says. ‘I suppose. So is that what he was trying to do? To . . . you know . . .’

  ‘Was he trying to kill himself?’

  ‘Yes,’ Victoria says, suddenly fighting back tears.

  ‘Sometimes an act – a violent act, or a desperate act – is the only way someone feels they can express themselves.’

  ‘Yes,’ Victoria says, pulling a tissue from her pocket and dabbing at her eyes. ‘Like a cry for help?’ she adds. ‘That’s what they always say, isn’t it? A cry for help.’

  ‘In Albert’s case – Bertie’s, I mean – I’d say more a cry to be heard,’ Dr Cheeder says.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Victoria says, wiping away fresh tears. ‘I can’t seem to stop crying today.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if you didn’t cry,’ Dr Cheeder says kindly.

  ‘But I don’t understand why he . . . why this. We’re a good, close-knit family, you know?’ Victoria says, her voice wobbling madly. ‘Bertie can tell us absolutely anything.’

  ‘It would seem he doesn’t feel that he can.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘It would seem that Bertie doesn’t feel he can tell you absolutely anything.’

  Victoria purses her lips and blows gently through them as she waits for this idea to sink in. ‘Has he told you something, then?’ she asks.

  ‘He has told me many things.’

  ‘But
has he told you something’s wrong? Something that he can’t tell us?’

  The doctor nods. ‘He has.’

  Victoria’s first reaction is to feel insulted that her son has spoken openly to this woman he has never met before. ‘God! He told you what’s wrong?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And I’m really pleased that he did. It’s a huge step forward.’

  ‘So, is it school? Is he being bullied?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Is it—’

  ‘Look,’ the doctor interrupts. ‘It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Bertie . . . it’s just that there are certain issues he doesn’t feel he can express at home right now. And I’m afraid my consultations with Bertie are in the strictest confidence. They have to be. To gain his trust.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yes,’ the doctor says, smiling. ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Well, he’s a minor, still. I’m his mother.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, yes.’

  ‘But you’re not going to tell me what’s wrong with my own son?’

  The doctor shakes her head gently. ‘It’s for Bertie to tell you, when he’s ready.’

  ‘And what if he’s never ready?’

  ‘That’s entirely up to him.’

  ‘Gosh,’ Victoria says. ‘So, what . . . I mean . . . how can I help him if I don’t know why he did this?’

  ‘You can just be there for him. You can love him. You can be understanding.’

  ‘But I don’t understand.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s why, well . . . I really think you should tell me.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure you do. But I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘OK . . .’ Victoria says doubtfully. ‘So, what now?’

  ‘Well, you need to keep an eye on him, obviously. For a few days, at least. I consider him very low risk, but you should keep an eye on him. That won’t be a problem, will it? You don’t have too many other commitments at the moment?’

  Victoria shakes her head. ‘Not really, no. And the overdose . . . he’s fine? There aren’t any side effects? Any . . . repercussions, I mean.’

  ‘None that we’ve detected. Everything seems fine.’